As Irina was plunged into the hallucination I was subjecting her too, I began to get to work. At the end of the hallucination I intended for her to be one her last legs when it came to her effort to resist worshipping me, and in order to push her over the cliff of doubt and skepticism and into the abyss of belief and worship I wanted to utilize some of my newer powers.

I swiftly created food from nothingness, and I began to utilize a few of my more creative abilities. One of them was my rarely utilized "Alter building" power, one of the quirkier powers I possessed due to the power of the civilization domain. It was considerably beefier now, with a power-up from the physics domain, and since it was even better now it, it was perfect for this moment.

I also began to be a bit playful with some of my more directly awe-inspiring abilities: the power to spontaneously generate food. This power was perfect for creating cults of gluttony, especially now that I was a demon lord and could infuse the food I created with all manner of demonic properties. As I began to complete the groundwork for an awe-inspiration finale to my attempt to convert Irina into my worshiper, I began to mull over something that was equally as exciting as the prospect of starting a new cult: mixing and matching powers and abilities.

As a sort of... omni-higher-being, I possessed a wide and frightening array of powers and abilities. At this point the number of powers I had that had names were almost certainly in the hundreds, possibly even in the thousands. In my head I kept a constant growing catalogue of the powers I possessed, and the list was enormous. Some of my favorite ones were actually newcomers to my repertoire, such as my powers over sadness, anger, and hatred.

That said, my ability to mix and match powers wasn't something I had much experience with until earlier today. Earlier today I had used powers that were elemental in nature, though also ones that deities could possess, to defeat both Agustino and the last of his loyalists.

Just now, in the midst of conversing with Irina, with the explicit intention of persuading her to become the first mortal to worship me as a demon lord, I had used one of my brand new powers that I acquired due to my transformation into an Ascendant Great Old One. As a result of it Irina was currently staring into space, and at the moment her mind was basically frozen until I focused and took her through the hallucination I wanted her to experience.

I glanced at her frozen form and chuckled. It was time I begin playing my game with her.

Irina "awoke" as it were and found herself inside of a massive cave. Inexplicably the elderly human woman could see perfectly fine in the cave, as though it were as well-lit as the interior of a castle, but when she looked around she didn't see any torches or other sources of illumination. As far as she could tell the cave was pitch-black but her eyes were capable of piercing the darkness, which was itself quite odd.

She found herself with her back to a dead-end, a massive, solid wall of stone blocking her from going in one direction, and a tunnel in the other that stretched on as far as she could see. She tried to remember... anything, and couldn't. She couldn't even remember her own name at the moment. She froze as she considered what to do, but it didn't take her long to accept that she only had one real option. The elderly woman steeled her resolve and began to walk in the direction of the strange tunnel.

Irina walked with a surprising amount of grace and confidence as she ventured into the unknown. She scanned the floor looking for something like footprints or perhaps something unnatural to indicate that someone else was in the cave with her. When she didn't find anything even after walking for several minutes she began to grow a little bit concerned.

"What is going on here?" She asked herself, possessing enough knowledge in her mind, even after the demon-lord responsible for this hallucination plunged her mind into this strange vision and temporarily forbade her from accessing some of her knowledge, to know that this was all weird and wrong. That said her confusion would soon be replaced by another emotion: hope.

After walking for what felt like almost half an hour Irina encountered something new. Noise. She was still in the tunnel she had started off in, but now she could hear something off in the distance. The sound of people speaking. This sudden development almost made Irina dash off towards the sounds, but after thinking for half a second about the sound she instead froze up and strained her ears to try and understand what was being spoken.

"We eat this food so that we may grow strong enough to destroy light and goodness everywhere." Said the voices, speaking as one but with a few individual voices who weren't quite able to speak in time with their companions.

"May our efforts please the Hungering Void. May our sacrifices placate his hunger so that in turn he may keep ours at bay. May the day that we ourselves enter his vast darkness be far off so that we may accrue glory in his name, and bring communities to his vast table." They said, clearly uttering some sort of prayer.

Irina, realizing they were praying, decided to venture on. There must have been a tremendous number of them for their prayer to be audible where she was, as she still couldn't see anything but the tunnel she was in, stretching ominously on as far as she could see.

I continued to modify the room I was in even as I began to create Irina's first new friends. The creatures I created to accompany and serve the human alchemist, as well as be cultists in her cult, were actually members of the same species as the parasitic, shape-shifting spider I had created on the world of Oxenos.

I created three of them, and the spiders eagerly surrounded me and began to emit a variety of noises. I could tell that they were worshipping their creator in their own particular way and so I merely smiled at them and accepted their praise. They weren't quite intelligent enough to speak, but they were capable of understanding me and would obey me when the time came. These ones weren't aggressive so I wasn't worried about them attempting to eat Irina.

Insects and arachnids were still some of my favorite animals. I adored both the Swarm and the odd, parasitic and nightmarish spider-like creatures I had created on Oxenos. I wanted to gain greater power over all animals, but especially insects and arachnids. Eventually I wanted to be able to command every spider and scorpion in existence, and for every single member of the hymenoptera family in the multiverse to worship me.

The three horse-sized creatures I created all looked over at the human woman who was still physically paralyzed. I chuckled and waved a hand at them, dismissing the hunger they came into existence feeling. "Not yet. Not her." I told them, intending for them to be her servants, not for her to be a meal for them.

That said, while that's happening the inner workings of my mind are alight and my prodigious will is working on unraveling the mysteries of Agustino's life. And I have just unraveled the first mystery, one which I doubt is the least significant. One particular aspect of the long-term plans he once had.

It didn't take Irina very long to find the source of the strange chanting. Or at least it didnt feel like it took her very long. Shortly after beginning to be able to hear the loudly chanted prayers she began to see the end of the tunnel.

Irina was many things, but cowardly wasn't one of them. And she had no real choice as far as she knew. She ventured on until she reached the end of the tunnel and upon reaching a point where she could actually see what awaited her she froze. Her mind struggled for a second to process what was awaiting her in the distance.

Off in the distance she saw a number of figures gathered around a large stone table. They were all seated, and had their heads bowed, not allowing her to clearly lay her eyes on their faces. They continued to mutter prayers, and the sheer number of them, coupled with the fact that they spoke in unison allowed their words to echo clearly even across the not small distance that separated them from her.

"Oh Great Void, we offer a portion of this food to you to starve off your hunger for even a moment longer, so that we may give to you more of existence." They uttered, their words quasi-apocalyptic and yet their tone was jubilant.

Irina felt fear begin to settle within her heart, these people appeared to have truly strange beliefs, but after a moment of steeling herself further she pressed onward. She knew that there was no way out of this aside from through it. As she spoke the strange cultists spoke more.

"Oh Great Hungerer, please give us the means to carry on and to bring the doom you whisper in all of our hearts to the world beyond our minds, our dreams." They said, speaking of sinister things. When Irina finally reached the edge of tunnel she again examined her surroundings. She was still, not stepping beyond the tunnel and into the wider area she had just reached.

Behind her laid the tunnel she had just walked through. In front of her laid a slightly wider space that housed the long table she saw before, and the strange figures seated at it who had yet to move. She gazed at them for only a second, before turning her gaze upwards. When she did she froze, gazing up at what she had hoped would have been a natural roof. It wasn't.

What she saw when she gazed upwards was a strange, dark... entity that was made of pure darkness. Even her augmented vision didn't allow her to actually make out the entity that was on the roof of the cavern. The creature was as dark as anything Irina had ever seen, and to her inferior mortal vision it resembled an enormous blanket of darkness. The strange entity breathed every few moments, and when it did it shuddered visibly, which was what allowed her to be sure it was alive.

After a few moments of looking at the entity, she felt a strange... force, tug on her mind and she took a step forward, stepping out from the tunnel and into the wider area that included the strange table. When she did so, she found that the floor beneath her was slippery for some reason and she gasped as she struggled to keep from slipping. Tragically that sound was the first one that she made close to the strange table and the even odder figures seated at it.

In unison the figures stopped muttering their prayers and turned to face her. Their eyes glowed sinisterly and even as she struggled to stay upright she was able to pull her gaze from the strange entity covering the roof of the cavern and look at the figures now facing her.

The strange group of men and women gathered around the table were a diverse bunch. Many of them were human, but some were dwarves, and an extremely small handful were elves. Each of them had colorless eyes and a strange grin on their faces. The single most directly disturbing aspect of their appearances was that their was dried blood around their mouths.

"Ugh..." Irina said, gasping as she finally managed to right herself and to stabilize her footing. The group of strange humanoids silently watched her, their eyes almost devoid of any emotion aside from perhaps a bit of anger at being disturbed. Eventually one of them, a male dwarf, balled his fists, and banged them hard on the stone table.

"Who are you!?" He shouted, his voice gruff. He had scarlet, blazing eyes. In front of him there was a ceramic bowl and it was filled with a thick scarlet liquid that Irina immediately recognized. Blood.

As I fooled around with the sort of hallucination that Irina was undergoing I was beginning to gradually unpack the information I had taken from the defeated corpse of Agustino. And internally several annoying voices were reacting to what I was learning.

"To think of all people to uncover, to begin even theoretically to tap into, one of the supreme schools of magic... One of them would be Agustino... A source of power so immense that even I couldn't track it." The domain of magic, a chaotic domain of change and power, remarked.

The first of the mysteries that had been unraveled was surprisingly simple. The key to Agustino's self-proclaimed ability to draw entire worlds into the Heart of Darkness; one of the supreme, lost schools of magic. The three schools that were unaccounted for when I had first learned of the nature of the domain of magic and its... children.

"A mere demon given such utterly incredible power. I wonder if the Heart of Darkness believed in Agustino?" Asked the domain of knowledge.

"A demon with such immense knowledge... I shudder at the thought of a devil having such incredible, weighty arcane power." Replied the domain of goodness.

"When I get back to the Heart of Darkness I'll have to ask the Heart itself why it gave such immense power to Agustino." I replied, adding my own two cents to the conversation.

"Will it speak to you?" Asked the law domain, a fairly quiet voice that hadn't spoken to me much yet. Internally, in my mindscape where each of them "lived", in sofar as such entities could "live", I nodded at the thing.

"Some of my powers as a demon lord include the ability to speak to it. So yes, it will." I tell the domain, which judging from the noise it makes in response to my words surprised it a little bit.

"Dimensional magic... Just from the name alone that sounds beyond powerful." I say, before chuckling inwardly. It has a truly intimidating name. I imagined that a master of it could tear apart entire dimensions, especially if one were a deity. It was apparently a form of magic so immensely powerful that it could pull entire worlds into the Heart of Darkness... A sort of power even I would have struggled to fully comprehend.